Jeffrey Dahmer felt he had gotten a bad rap from the start.

Insane or Not?

When it came to Dahmer, a strange thing happened in the eyes of former FBI profiler/agent Robert Ressler. According to Ressler, Jeffrey Dahmer was indicative of a whole new "breed" of serial killers, for in Dahmer, the former agent saw more traits of serial killer behaviors rolled into one person than he had ever seen before. The examples he sites in his book Whoever Fights Monsters (St. Martin's True Crime Library 1992) are: Richard Denton Chase, John Gacy, Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper. Ressler came to this conclusion after interviewing Dahmer for 2 days straight. Ressler also came to the conclusion that Dahmer was insane and testified to this at Dahmer's trial. As a matter of fact, Mr. Ressler, by the time the interviews were over, states in his book that, "I felt only empathy for the tormented and twisted person who sat before me."
However, profiler John Douglas, co-author of Mind Hunter, felt the complete opposite. He did not consider Dahmer insane at all.

When he was 16, he had already become an alcoholic and showing signs of what his future would hold. He had an intense interest in chemistry and in torturing and dismembering animals.
When Dahmer was 18 years old, he committed his first murder. He picked up a hitchhiker and killed him rather spontaneously in June of 1979. Relevant or not, the year before his parents divorced.

For the next 9 years, his fantasies built up, until in 1981, fantasies became reality. Like other serial killers, Dahmer's victims grew in number as he got more "comfortable" with killing--1 in '87, 2 in '88, 1 in '89, 4 in '90, and 8 in '91--until he was caught. In fact, the last few killings were only days apart.
Dahmer was a cannibal--consumed human flesh and blood. He kept body parts (including skeleton and skulls). He preferred sexual acts with dead and dismembered bodies. *Some people do not consider Dahmer a cannibal because he only "tasted" flesh a time of 2. This should be your own decision.

Jeffrey Dahmer's fall began on July 22, 1991, when officers found in Dahmer's apartment a butcher knife and some Polaroid's of men in homosexual activity. Some of the pictures were also of dead men. In many of the pictures, the corpses had been dismembered and mutilated in other ways. As Officer Mueller looked around the room, he realized the pictures had taken place in that very room.

As the officers continued to search the place, they found horror everywhere. A human head in the refrigerator, hands in a cooking pot, 3 heads in a freezer, and a total of 5 skulls in a box and filing cabinet.

Konerak was only fourteen and he was running for his life. This was his only chance to escape from the horrible smelling apartment where the creepy blond guy had slipped him some kind of powerful drug. It seemed that luck was with him that he started to come around just as the blond man had left the apartment.

It took all the strength he had to get up and get to the door. He was so disoriented and panicked that it made no difference that he was naked. This was his only chance to survive. He was working strictly on instinct. Just get out of there and run away.

It was just before 2 A.M. and Sandra Smith called 911 to report the boy running around "butt naked.". She didn't know who he was, but she knew he was injured and terrified.

The paramedics got there first and put a blanket around the naked, dazed boy. Two police officers arrived soon after and tried to understand what was going on with this young man of Asian descent.

Sandra Smith, eighteen years old and her cousin Nicole Childress, also eighteen, were standing near the boy when the Milwaukee city police arrived. The tall blond man was also standing near the boy. The conversation became heated between the girls, the blond man and the police.

The tall blond man told the police the Konerak was his nineteen-year-old lover who had been drinking too much. Konerak who was drugged and incoherent wasn't able to contradict the smooth-talking blond man. Dahmer gave the police a picture ID.

The two young women tried to intervene. They had seen the terrified boy trying to resist the blond man before the police arrived. They were angry and upset. The police were ignoring them and listening to the white man instead.

Just to be on the safe side, the two officers went with the boy and the tall blond man to his apartment. The apartment smelled bad, but it was very neat. Konerak's clothing was folded and placed on the sofa. There were a couple of photographs of Konerak in black bikini briefs.

Konerak sat quietly on the sofa unable to talk intelligently. It's not even clear that he understood the calm explanation the blond man was giving the police. The blond man was apologizing that his lover had caused a disturbance and promised it wouldn't happen again.

The police believed the blond man. They had no reason not to -- he was well-spoken, intelligent and very calm. The Asian was apparently drunk and incoherent. The officers, not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic argument between homosexual lovers, left the apartment with Konerak still sitting quietly on the sofa. In that neighborhood, the officers felt that there were more pressing things for them to do.

What they missed in the apartment bedroom was the body of Tony Hughes, whose decomposing corpse had lain for three days on the bed.

What they missed was the blond man immediately strangling the Asian boy and having sex with his corpse.

What they missed were the photos that the blond man took of the dead boy, the subsequent dismemberment of his body, and the cleaning up of his skull to be kept as a trophy.

What they missed was the opportunity to take the name of Jeffrey Dahmer off the ID that the man gave them and run a background check which would have told them than the calm, well-spoken man was a convicted child molester who was still on probation.

The story didn't stop there. The two girls who the police ignored went back home to Sandra Smith's mother, Glenda Cleveland, a 36-year-old woman who lived next to the Oxford Apartments which Jeffrey Dahmer called home. Later, Cleveland called up the officers to find out what happened to the Asian boy. She asked how old the child was. "It wasn't a child. It was an adult," the officer said.

When she continued to ask questions, he told her: "Ma'am, I can't make it any more clear. It's all taken care of. He's with his boyfriend and in his boyfriend's apartment...It's as positive as I can be...I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life."

A couple of days later, Cleveland called the officers back after she read a newspaper article about the disappearance of a Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone who looked like the boy that had seen trying to escape from Jeff Dahmer. They never sent anybody to talk with her.

Cleveland even tried contacting the Milwaukee office of the FBI, but nothing came of it.